After 50 years, Plymouth man gets class ring back

PLYMOUTH - Nearly 50 years after graduating, an alumnus of Cape Cod Community College returned recently to retrieve a souvenir he thought was lost forever.

When Edwin J. Payton, of Plymouth, left the college in 1965, he was a member of just the third class to graduate. Wanting to remember his time there, Payton purchased a class ring, and took it with him when he went to Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green to finish his undergraduate studies.

Not long after, however, Payton lost the ring. While he doesn’t remember the exact circumstances, he said it was likely at a party.

Nearly 10 years after Payton’s time at WKU, a professor there named Shirley Ann Laney was experimenting with a new metal detector and came across the ring in a park.

Laney held on to the ring through the years, eventually carrying it to her current home in Gardendale in west Texas.

Her neighbor there, a disabled Vietnam veteran, occasionally does odd jobs for Laney, who will turn 80 this year. After a round of chores in February, 2013, Laney thanked her neighbor, Terry Green, with several old rings, including one from Cape Cod Community College’s Class of 1965.

The ring’s distant origin, along with the sailing ship engraved on its side, seemed exotic to Green, evocative of salt air and ocean breezes.

“Cape Cod is really what struck me,” he said. “I’m out in West Texas.”

Green never considered selling the ring, recognizing that it likely carried a special significance to someone, somewhere. He had a jeweler clean it, and later realized that there were faint markings engraved on the inside. Another visit to the jeweler provided the clue Green needed to begin searching for the ring’s owner.

“He looked inside the ring and gave me those initials, EJP,” Green said. He contacted the school, where a search of student records revealed the only member of the Class of 1965 whose name matched the initials: Edwin J. Payton. The school then contacted Payton.